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Remembering Raquel - Vivian Vande Velde

I love stories like this. A tragic event happens, and we are left with conflicting accounts of what really happened. Truth becomes subjective, if not completely unattainable. It’s what I loved so much about Akutagawa’s Rashomon (perhaps better known in its Akira Kurosawa adaptation).

Before her tragic death, Raquel was a virtual non-entity in her school. Shy and overweight, she flew under most students’ radar. After her death, her classmates try to make sense of their own mortality by latching onto their fallen peer posthumously. Classmates who never gave her the time of day show up to shed tears at her wake. Her best friend and father agonize over what they might have done differently to prevent the accident. Miscellaneous other characters (including a school janitor and eyewitnesses to the accident) provide insight into what may have actually happened the night of her death.

Remembering Raquel is a quick read (weighing in at a light 137 pages), but not a fluffy one. There are important details to absorb and characters/events to understand. After reading, we have a fairly good idea of what may have caused Raquel’s accident, but enough evidence lingers to cast reasonable doubt. Did she step in front of the car on purpose? Did she stumble while goofing around on the sidewalk? Odds favor the latter, but there is also enough evidence to suggest the former. We’ll never know for certain.

And that’s the point.